


No Confessions

by Felicia_Rottingstone



Series: The Heart of a Saint [3]
Category: Saints Row
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Flogging, Grief/Mourning, Heavy BDSM, Hurt/Comfort, Not safe or sane though, Stocks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:08:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26942656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felicia_Rottingstone/pseuds/Felicia_Rottingstone
Summary: In the aftermath of crash landing in Steelport, Boss is desperate to feel something, anything, even if it hurts. Viola DeWynter knows how to make it hurt. The only question is, which one will be the first to use her safeword.
Relationships: Boss (Saints Row)/Viola DeWynter, Female Boss (Saints Row)/Viola DeWynter
Series: The Heart of a Saint [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1069103
Kudos: 5





	No Confessions

I had a lot of reasons to be pissed off. I was stuck in Steelport, an ugly industry town where people were still fucking stupid enough to bump into me on the street. My money was gone, all my assets frozen, and I didn’t even have the credentials to buy a t-shirt at Planet Saints, a store I technically owned through three or four subsidiary shell companies. I was squashed into a shoe-box apartment with an angry bitch who thought none of us could hear her crying in the shower, her slimy ex-boyfriend, and Pierce. And Johnny Gat was dead.

My best fucking friend in the whole fucking world. We couldn’t even find the body. Just a bunch of wreckage floating in the harbor.

Despite all that, I wasn’t angry. To be angry, I would have had to feel something. Instead, I was numb, my ability to grasp the reality of my current situation completely untenable. This was a farce. This was a hallucination or a drug-induced nightmare. Maybe it was hell, but it sure as shit wasn’t real life anymore. 

I needed to get out of the apartment. Desperately. Everyone else’s emotions were a suffocating cloud that threatened to drown me with each second that ticked by. I burned through our entire stash of Loa dust on the first two nights, but it didn’t do shit to help. If being high was no different than being sober, then what was the fucking point anyway? I could’ve stuck my hand on a hotplate, watched the skin boil and bubble, and not even felt a twinge.

I left the apartment well after the sun had gone down, dressed in a t-shirt and a pair of Shaundi’s old jeans that fit so tight I almost couldn’t button them close. It was a far cry from the designer outfits Pierce’s personal stylist had been putting together for me lately, personally tailored pieces that made me look both intimidating and stunning. Now I looked like any random woman you could bump into at the grocery store. In a way, it was perfect. No one would expect the boss of the Saints to wear the kind of clothes you could get from Sloppy Seconds. I’d never be recognized.

My original plan was to steal the first fast car I came across and use it to find the best drag-racing spots in the city. Nice cars weren’t hard to come across, but though I saw many, none sparked enough excitement for me to boost. I walked aimlessly instead, bumping into whoever wouldn’t move out of my way, waiting for someone to take a swing at me. Maybe then I’d feel something. Indignation. Rage. I’d even settle for the dull throb of a bruise or the sharp sting of a scratch. But the people of Steelport were slower to violence than the people of Stillwater. Even a few choice insults couldn’t elicit a response greater than a raised middle finger.

Then, rising up in front of me like the proverbial Mecca was the biggest, flashiest, gaudiest sex club I had ever laid eyes on: Safeword. 

It was the flashing neon lights that caught my eye first. Pink, blue, green, and so much red I could feel my body temperature rising just looking at the damn place. This was a place that screamed “SEX FOR SALE” in a way that spoke to me on a deep, personal level, the stone columns and sparkling fountain creating the same effect of faux class as rhinestones glued onto fishnets. 

I had always loved being around sex workers. Strip clubs, brothels, massage parlors, particularly crowded street corners late at night. As long as I didn’t poach anyone’s client (I wouldn’t), I had always been welcome and in a way I wasn't in other places. When I had been younger, the sex workers had treated me with respect and affection before anyone else did. Once I was old enough to become a client, that didn’t change, and more than once I’d bought a girl’s time just to be around someone who didn’t stress me out. 

I hesitated in front of the massive establishment. From the whispered conversations of patrons coming and going, it sounded like a fetish club. I wanted to go inside, and I could feel my mouth watering at the prospect of all those chains and leather straps. But it was stupid. It was so fucking stupid. Getting tied up by strangers in a strange town while people wanted me dead was like sending the devil a letter with my home address and a list of my sins.

On the other hand, getting fucked was a real good way to take my mind off all the bullshit that had happened in the last few days. If I couldn’t feel it, I could always tell the girl to go harder. And really, Johnny would want me to mourn him at a sex club. It was what I would want him to do if I had kicked the bucket first.

I went in.

The woman at the front desk seemed friendly enough. Her wide blue eyes had been heavily lined in black and her lips were painted a sensual shade of red. She was dressed in nothing but a chastity belt and one of those chrome bras that could be locked on. A small part of me envied her. Maybe not a small part. She walked me through the club procedure and handed me a form to fill out. As I checked off my limits and preferences, she explained that the club was monitored for safety reasons, but assured me that all footage was deleted after 24 hours. I shrugged. Literally no one would be shocked or surprised to see a video of me doing something x-rated. An Ultor exec had once leaked a sex tape of me to drive sales, and it hadn’t even made the front page of tabloids.

“I’ll have one of our ponies show you to your suite,” she said, taking the form from me and gesturing to a man clad in the leather gear of pony-play. “You can undress and get situated once you’re comfortable. Someone will be there to service you within 10 minutes or your session is on the house.”

She glanced briefly at the choices I had marked on the sheet, then smiled at me and pointed up the stairs. The pony waited until I turned to him, then slowly trotted across the lobby and toward the private rooms. I glanced around me as I did, taking in the various outfits of the patrons and workers milling about. It seemed that Safeword catered to every kind of fetish play, not just bondage. I particularly enjoyed the use of living furniture, eyeing a tray of champagne flutes resting on the back of a man on his hands and knees. When I got back to Stillwater, I’d have to hire myself one of those.

The room I was led to was bathed in warm, low mood-lighting. The walls were a red vinyl that looked classy but was probably easy to clean. There were various racks of equipment for bondage, impact-play, and torture, but the main feature was a large wooden stockade, opened and waiting for a prisoner. I ran my hands along the grains and felt a rush of blood to my cunt. I had always been a fan of bondage, but being locked in stocks was something I had only ever fantasized about.

I shed my clothes quickly, folding and placing them in the box that had been provided. Then I stepped up to the stocks. I noticed cuffs at the base and secured them around my ankles. The best way to ensure the stocks were used was to have myself ready and waiting in them. And if the domme took a little long to get to the room and I had to wait, trapped and exposed, helpless to free myself, then that was a price I would enthusiastically pay. It wasn’t easy to lower the bar down over my head and wrists, but somehow I managed. I couldn’t lock it myself, but getting free on my own would have been a struggle, so instead, I patiently waited for the fun to begin. The anticipation and excitement were a welcome relief from feeling nothing at all. It was like I was meant to find this place.

When the door finally opened only a few minutes later, I couldn’t see who entered. The stocks were facing the wrong direction. But I did hear a feminine voice murmur a sound of approval at seeing me already immobilized. She came up behind me, casually ran her fingertips across my lower back, and flipped the lock on the bar, cementing my imprisonment. Then she stepped into view, and I cursed myself.

A fucking DeWynter sister. Fuck. I had known coming here, doing this, would be a risk, but I didn’t think I’d literally be delivering myself to the enemy. Fuck me for not doing research ahead of time. Fuck my pussy for choosing sex over grand theft auto. And fuck the DeWynters for their role in what happened to Johnny. 

She had swapped out her leather skirt for a pair of wide-legged, high-waisted dress pants and a silk button-up buttoned up to her neck, but her color scheme hadn’t changed, and she still wore that chain around her hips. Now if only I could remember which one she was…

“Ms. DeWynter,” I addressed her, my voice staying low and calm. Yes, I was completely immobilized, but there was no point in letting her know how helpless I was. If she was going to kill me, she was going to kill me, but if she wasn’t, there was no point in approaching negotiations from a position of assumed inferiority.

“You know, you’re lucky,” she said, her voice low and sultry. “If it was Kiki who had caught you in here, you’d be dead.”

“And you’re  _ not _ going to kill me?” So this was Viola, then. I was having trouble keeping an eye on her from my position. She kept moving around, and it was starting to hurt to strain my neck every which way. “What is your plan, then?”

“I am a businesswoman, first and foremost.” She pulled out a pair of latex gloves and put them on, snapping the material against her wrist while she appraised me, her dark eyes focused and intense. “You have paid for a service, and I intend to see that you get your money’s worth. Can’t have my business get a reputation for leaving contracts unfulfilled.”

“You can’t be serious,” I challenged her. She was an incredibly beautiful woman, and under normal circumstances, I’d be happy to have her work me over. But this wasn’t normal circumstances. “You really expect me to believe you’ll honor a safe word and not keep me here until Loren decides what to do with me?”

Viola took two slow steps forward, until she was directly in front of me, my head level with her crotch. If I looked up, my mouth would be at a very advantageous position for her. She crouched down, took a fist-full of my hair, and peered intently into my face.

“Safeword uses the standard color system,” she purred. It was the same spiel the desk woman had given when I’d signed the forms, but from Viola’s lips, it sounded much more erotic. I felt the muscles between my legs clench involuntarily. “Green means go ahead. If I ask for a color, and you wish to continue, you must say green.”

“Can it be any green? Like, emerald or jade or-” She slapped me across the face. It wasn’t too hard, but hard enough to make me shut up. I had forgotten to put face-slapping on my list of limits, but now that she had done it, I was reconsidering it as a limit.

“You will say green or the session will stop and you will not receive a refund. If at any time you need a break, or you need me to slow down, you will say yellow, and I won’t tell a soul how pathetically weak you are.” She was whispering in my ear now, and every word sent tiny bolts of electricity to my core as her breath puffed against my skin. I could feel myself getting wetter. “And if, because you’re such a fragile little wimp, you find that you can’t go on and need to be set free to return to your equally pathetic friends and cry about how mean I was, you will say red. If you cannot say red, because I have grown tired of your tart little mouth and gagged you, you may say uh. Uh. Uh.”

Each sound was like a little hit of ecstasy, flooding my veins with desire. Whatever I had been planning to do before, I couldn’t safe-word now. I had to know what it was like to have her control me, even if it was one of the stupidest choices I had ever made. Johnny would understand. He knew that sometimes the pussy called.

“Do you have any questions?” Viola asked.

“Nada,” I replied. She slapped me again.

“When I ask you a question, you will reply, ‘No,  _ mistress _ .’ Do you understand?” she corrected.

“Yes, mistress,” I whimpered. She rewarded me by stroking my cheek and loosening her grip on my hair slightly. 

“Now, you put down a whole list of fun activities we could do, but since you so obediently put yourself into my stocks already, how can I say no to a good, old-fashioned whipping?”

“I guess you can’t,” I answered. Viola tisked in response.

“That’s the second time you’ve talked out of turn,” she scolded. “I guess I’ll have to gag you sooner than I thought.”

She stood in a fluid, graceful motion, and I couldn’t help but watch the way her narrow hips swayed with every step she took. From a bench against the wall, she selected a black latex and leather penis gag with a tube and hand pump trailing from the front panel. She returned to me and gripped my chin. “Say ah.”

I clenched my teeth and smiled through pursed lips. I expected her to slap me again or pinch my nose or do something sudden to trick me into opening my mouth and accepting the gag. She didn’t. She smiled sweetly and leaned close enough to nuzzle her nose against mine, her lips ghosting over mine with the barest of touches. 

“Come now, my little saint,” she whispered against my cheek. “You’ve got to play the game if you want to win. I already know you want this. I can smell it on you. Be a good girl and open your mouth, or I’ll be a good girl and set you free.”

Damn her. She wasn’t going to give me any chance to deny my consent to the whole endeavor. There would be no plausible deniability. If I wanted her to continue, I’d have to participate voluntarily, and if I did that, I couldn’t say later I’d been forced into it. I’d have to own up to my own perverse desires. I opened my mouth, and she slipped the gag inside.

“There, now. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” She secured the strap around the back of my head as my tongue outlined the shape of the small protrusion in my mouth. “Of course, I’ll have to punish you for making me wait.”

Viola grabbed the hand pump and began to squeeze it. The gag swelled inside me as she did, filling my mouth. At first, it was little different than having any other kind of penis gag in my mouth, but she kept pumping, each squeeze of her hand deliberate, her eyes on mine as she tracked my reaction. The pressure built, trapping my tongue in place and forcing my jaw apart as far as was allowed. Then the balloon expanded into the back of my mouth, pressing against my soft palate and past my uvula. In a moment, the gag wasn’t just uncomfortable, it had blocked my ability to breathe.

I didn’t break eye contact as I held my breath, but she seemed to sense the change anyway, her lips curling as she stopped pumping to wait. Was this where she went back on her word and killed me? It would be easy enough. She wouldn’t have to do anything except watch as I suffocated. It’s what I would have done, if our roles were reversed.

“I want you to remember this feeling,” she instructed as my body began to spasm in panic. “Remember that I am in complete control over your body right now. Any pleasure you feel? It’s only what I allow. Any pain? It’s what I have deemed necessary. If you walk, if you talk, if you breathe, it is only because I allow it. It’s in your best interest to do exactly as I say, although it will be much more fun for me if you continue your disobedience. Your face does turn a lovely shade of purple.”

With a twist of her wrist, she disengaged the release, and the gag deflated to be nothing more than a phallic intrusion. I sucked in air, and she turned away to return to her tools.

“It’s a pity you marked blood play as a limit,” she lamented, pulling a flogger from the selection. “I think you can withstand a great deal of pain, and I’ve always wanted to try out the cat o’nine tails. No matter. I’ve got other ways to make you regret coming here.”

Swinging the flogger gently back and forth, she walked behind me. I shivered as she let the tips of the leather drag along my spine, the motion unexpectedly gentle and sensuous. The sensation disappeared, and I felt a brief gust of air before the lashes came down on my back again, this time with a force that stung. Three more times, she struck me, each blow enough to bite but not enough to make me flinch.

“I can see you glistening from here, you slut,” Viola laughed, punctuating her phrases with slower, stronger swings. “Tell me, what makes you wetter? The anticipation of pain or the pain itself?”

I didn’t bother trying to answer. Instead, I straightened my back and raised my hips up to meet her swing. She laughed again and obliged me, the bite of the flogger now lingering with each overlapping strike. I wondered if my skin was visibly red yet, or if the light of the room was too dark to even tell.

“You like this too much,” she complained, pausing to rake her nails along my spine instead, the latex tempering the sharp edges. “A bitch like you can take a lot, can’t you? I’ll have to make it harder for you to bear, then.”

She laid the flogger across my back and walked back to the bend, palming several small objects before disappearing from view again. She ran one hand across my shoulders, then reached under me to caress my hanging breasts.

“I will admit you have an impressive pair of tits,” she complimented, squeezing them roughly. “God, I love how full they are, how much they hang and jiggle. I wonder if I can make them hang a little bit more.”

Grasping one nipple, she twisted and pinched it, pulling down on it as much as it would go. When she released it, the pain didn’t dissipate, but instead solidified into an intense pinching bite, the substantial weight of a nipple clamp gently swinging from the captured tip. She moved to the other side and repeated the process so that both my nipples throbbed in the serrated teeth of heavy steel clamps.

“Well, isn’t that a pretty sight?” she said, stepping away from me to view her handiwork. “You can’t see it, but there are two iron weights hanging from each tit. Luckily, the teeth of the clamps are really digging into your skin. Otherwise they’d pull right off, preventing me from the enjoyment of trying to slap them off you later.”

I took a deep breath, trying not to squirm in place, and bit down on the gag to keep from groaning in frustration. My nipples felt like they were on fire, a fire that ran in a taut line right to my core. The prospect of having the clamps slapped off drove me wild, but I wasn’t ready to admit how much I wanted her to hurt me.

Viola’s hand came down on my ass in a hard slap, the unexpected blow making me jerk in surprise, the pain in my nipples flaring from the movement. Instead of raising for another blow, Viola’s hand instead caressed the curve of my ass, kneading and massaging the muscle-hardened flesh. Her other hand joined the first to roam over my backside, grabbing the cheeks and pulling them apart to better expose what lay between them.

“You’re practically gushing, you know,” she observed. “If you drip onto my shoes, I will make you clean them off. Too bad only good girls get their cunts filled. I guess yours will have to stay an unused hole.”

This time I couldn’t help it, and I pulled against the stocks, my fisted hands scraping against the wood but unable to slip out.

“Does that upset you?” she asked. “Well, I supposed I could just open the door and let whoever wandered in fuck you. Would you like that? Would you like to be a cum dump for a dozen or two strange, dirty cocks? Not that it matters what you like, since your body belongs to me right now. It’s not like you could stop me.” 

A guttural sound ripped from my lungs at her threat, disgusted at the prospect, but my cunt, the bastard traitor, only spasmed and continued to leak onto my legs, something about the helplessness of the situation sending me into a frenzy.

“Don’t worry, my little saint,” she assured me, catching some of my juices on her fingers and slathering it along the cleft between my cheeks. “I’ve always been a bit selfish. I don’t like to share my toys, not even with Kiki.”

She rubbed a finger around the puckered bud of my asshole, spitting onto it and mixing her saliva with my own natural lubricant. “Besides, I’m not completely cruel. I’ll fuck some of your holes, even if that one stays empty.”

One finger pressed inside, the gentle intrusion sending sensations of pleasure along my skin. She sawed it back and forth, pulling it out and reinserting it several times as she loosened the entrance. A second finger joined the first, and I rocked my hips in time to her movements. When she pulled them both out, I whimpered in disappointment. A slap across my ass served as a reprimand.

“Don’t complain. I don’t have to make anything feel good for you, remember? If you continue to be ungrateful, I can always re-inflate your gag.” Once again, she walked to the bench, but this time she showed me what she’d chosen: a larger than life dildo, the blue silicone molded into a hyper-realistic veined monster penis. “Kiki’s more into the pony play. She loves those tails, ya know? But I know the benefit of a nicely stretched asshole. This one should fit nicely, don’t you think?”

She laid the dildo across my face to make sure I understood how big it was, letting the thick log hit my cheek a few times. I instinctively balked at it, but she didn’t seem to acknowledge my hesitation as she returned to my ass and pressed the tip of the dildo against my anus.

“I’m going to set a stopwatch,” she informed me. “You’ll have 1 minute to open your ass enough for this thing to fill you, and if you don’t, for each second over a minute you’ll get a strike of the crop. If you understand, don’t say anything at all.”

I whimpered again.

“Hmm, I don’t think that counts a word, so I’ll just go ahead.”

She pressed the dildo against my bud with gentle force. On the one hand, I was relieved her plan wasn’t just to shove it in and rip me open. On the other hand, without significant force, I’d be on the receiving end of a truly terrifying number of swats. I took a deep breath and willed my muscles to relax, pushing back against the dildo as best I could to speed the process.

“It’s about time you started making an effort,” she said. “Maybe you’re not entirely worthless after all.”

As the head of the dildo pressed inside, I could feel my ring stretching past what was comfortable, but I didn’t pull away or tense up. Each agonizing inch increased the pressure, the lubrication I’d been given insufficient to make it a frictionless entrance. It began to hurt, the pain of being stretched open mingling with the pain of my nipples and intensified by the looming timer. I let out a grunt of effort from forcing myself to keep relaxed, my legs and core and hands tightly clenched to compensate. I have no idea how long it took. I couldn’t even tell how deep the thing was, feeling only the generalized sensations of being speared on something that pushed me to the very limits of what I was capable of.

“That should be good enough,” she finally said. 

Something wrapped around my waist before being dragged between my legs, and with a click, I could feel that the dildo had been locked in place. I experimentally moved my hips, but the feeling of fullness was overwhelming, and whatever Viola had attached to me made sure that it stayed that way.

“I’m sure you’ve been spit-roasted once or twice,” she said, crouching down at my face and pulling my hair until I looked her in the face. “You should be used to this feeling by now.” 

She gave a few more pumps on the gag, not enough to cut off my breathing again, but enough that my jaw strained. 

“You got there in the end, but I’m afraid it took you much too long,” Viola informed me. “Giving you 82 stikes with the crop is a lot of work for me, but I’m afraid if I don’t follow through, you’ll never become a better person… well, a better fucktoy, anyway. I'll tell you what, though. I’ll do the first 40 on your ass, then move to your tits and give 20 each to them. If you can keep the clamps on the whole time, I’ll waive the last two.”

I nodded enthusiastically as if she had made the most generous of deals, but in truth, I longed for the pain that was coming. My whole body shook from the mix of sensations, the intensity of feelings more than I’d thought I was capable of. The more pain I felt in my body, the more real I felt, the more real the world felt, and I wasn’t ready to return to the numbness I’d felt before. At this point, I’d have agreed to anything she’d suggested.

The riding crop cut across the skin of my ass with a resounding thwack. Viola didn’t move the strikes around, concentrating them to the lower half of the curve of my ass. They overlapped, painful strike layering over painful strike. She didn’t count them out either, and I quickly lost the ability to keep track of how many blows she’d delivered. It didn’t take long for my knees to buckle, but with my ankles shackled and my head immobilized, I couldn’t even collapse to the ground. She was relentless. Even when I squirmed and cried out, her strikes were steady and even.

When she finally paused, I gasped in relief before remembering she wasn’t done yet. With the frayed tip of the crop, she prodded at one restrained nipple, jolts of pain searing through me at the touch. The crop retreated. I felt her hand at the back of my neck, and then the gag was deflating as she removed the entire thing.

“What color?” she asked.

I panted heavily, the drool that had collected in my mouth dripping from me in an imitation of my pussy. Viola deposited the gag back on the bench, then crouched in front of me again, pushing the hair from my face and wiping away the tears I hadn’t even realized I’d shed.

“It’s okay,” she murmured. “You don’t always have to be strong. You want to submit to me, and I don’t blame you for that. But good girls know what their limits are. They know when to give up. Don’t you want to be a-”

“Green,” I cut in. Her brows lifted in a slight surprise. “ _ Mistress _ .”

I wasn’t a good girl. I was a psychopath with homicidal tendencies. I was a drug lord, a gangbanger, a thug. I’d done a lot of fucked up things in my life, and I’d endured a lot of fucked up things happening to me. I took the pain I felt and I used it to fuel my ambition, my rage, and I never, _never_ gave up.

If anything, the strikes against my tits were sharper, more biting, the weighted clamps swinging painfully with each blow. I let myself feel it all. I let myself scream and cry and struggle. I let go of the tight control I’d had over my reactions for the past I-don’t-know-how-long and embraced every emotion that flared inside of me. I bucked in the stocks, the structure shaking against the force of my shoulders slamming into it. Viola kept her professionalism, landing the crop against my breasts with deliberate, calculated swings. When it was almost over, one of the clamps dislodged and swung wildly from the tip of my nipple before finally succumbing to gravity and falling to the floor. The blood that rushed back into the nipple was as painful as the clamp itself, and I shrieked in response.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, I guess I’ll be delivering those last two strikes after all,” Viola said once I’d settled a bit. “Any preference to where I deliver them?”

“No, Mistress,” I answered.

She circled me for a moment before running the tip of the crop around the dildo that still speared me. For a moment, I thought she’d deliver the strikes to the top of the dildo, forcing the beast even farther inside me. Instead, she pulled aside the strap that ran between my legs, exposing my long-neglected clit.

With the strongest, most forceful swing she’d yet given me, she brought the crop up between my legs. Pain exploded from the impact, but so did pleasure, the cluster of nerves that peeked out from the sopping lips responding to the hit as if it were also a caress. If Viola couldn’t tell from the way my back arched, the moan I let out made it very clear. She chuckled, then delivered the final swing.

Before the initial sting could even subside, Viola dropped her crop and rubbed her fingertips against the beleaguered bud. She was as expert at administering pleasure as she was at administering pain, and I found myself crying out in ecstasy with as much volume as I had before. My entire body vibrated with the new sensations, all self-control decimated. It truly did feel like Viola was the one controlling my body, as it moved and shuddered through no intention of mine. My orgasm quickly followed, a crashing wave of heat that rolled along my nerves and washed away any remaining coherence. 

I hung limply from the stocks in the aftermath. One last time, Viola crouched down at my face, grasped my by my hair, and forced my gaze to hers.

“I’m usually very insistent in administering aftercare,” she said. “However, given the nature of our relationship, you’ll have to forgive me for pawning that work off on one of my employees. I want to make sure you have no idea where I am when you’re finally let out of these restraints. Don’t feel too bad, though. I never interact directly with clients, so you should feel honored that I came down to see you at all.”

I stared at her blankly, barely registering her words. She leaned in and brushed her lips against mine in a tender, almost loving kiss.

“I thoroughly enjoyed playing with you, little saint,” she purred. “I’d suggest we do it again some time, but I think it’s in your best interest if you don’t come back here. Still, I’m sure we’ll see each other again. It’s a pity you won’t survive that meeting.”

Viola vanished and was shortly replaced by another woman. She removed the harness and the dildo, then carefully cleaned me and applied some sort of soothing cream to the inflamed and damaged skin. She released my feet before lifting the bar, and when I couldn’t stand on my own, she gently manhandled me onto the lounge I hadn’t even noticed had been behind me the whole time. I flinched at the twinges of pain with every movement, by my arms and legs were too weak from exertion to do anything about it. She brought me a glass of water and stroked my hair until I was composed enough to dress myself.

When I returned to the apartment, the sky was streaked with the pink and gold of sunrise. Shaundi was in the kitchen, a griddle sizzling as she added to the stack of French toast next to it.

“You look like shit,” she observed, her eyes red-rimmed.

“Thanks. Where’s Pierce?”

“Sleeping on the couch.”

“Good. It’s time to get our shit together and take down the Syndicate.”

Shaundi paused, one piece of toast hovering over the finished stack. She narrowed her eyes at me. “Where were you all night?”

I yawned, buying myself time to think of an answer besides “getting fucked by the enemy.” Shaundi wouldn’t understand. No one would, except Johnny. And he was dead.

“Was gathering intel,” I finally answered.

Shaundi grew more suspicious. “You don’t gather intel. Pierce and I gather intel. You kick down the doors and blow shit up.”

“I don’t know if you noticed, Shaundi, but shit’s fucked up right now. We’re a man down, and billions of dollars short. I’m gonna do what needs to be done.” A flash of guilt crossed her face, followed by pain and grief. 

I felt the numbness creeping over me again, a resistance to emotionally respond to anything that was going on around me. The emotions that Viola had pulled out of me were short-lived, but maybe that was for the best. I needed to focus on the one thing that mattered right now. I needed to avenge Johnny’s death.


End file.
